our dreams assured and we all will sleep well
by starinhercorner
Summary: This was the first birthday party Conner had ever had. If anything went wrong, she felt she just might spontaneously combust. Which, incidentally, was something that could go wrong. [Supermartian, M'gann-centric.]


**Author's Notes: This is the actual derpiest thing.**

* * *

Everyone was waiting. Tendrils of anticipation were winding through the air around her, feeding a swelling mass at the back of her thoughts. Rather than cutting through and leaving gaps in the joy that had filled the room like a mist, though, she could feel the anticipation and the joy reciprocate each other, together building a sensation with which she actually was familiar. It was strikingly similar to what had coursed through her as she'd hid in her uncle's ship and Earth had crept ever closer—fear being really the only absent component. The only fear in this room now was in her.

But this was not a planet that she was facing down with a heart so light it was caught in her throat. This was a cake.

If Megan Wheeler could light all seventeen candles on her boyfriend's birthday cake, so could Megan Morse. That had been episode twenty-one, and this was the 21st of March… the coincidence was uncanny and to her was just proof that if this whole thing went wrong, it would be because of something _she did_ wrong. And Conner… Conner was looking straight at her, and the paper party hat she'd constructed for him looked like it would drop off his head right now if he moved, its shape opening too wide and its string hanging too loosely from under his chin—not to mention how the glue at its seam was giving out, and the edge of the bright blue paper was peeling up, despite how _perfect_ the finished product had seemed the night she'd made it, and—no, no, she couldn't go down that road right now.

There was a box of matches in her hand, after all, crucial and potent and dangerous no matter how tiny. But this was not a keg of gunpowder or a bundle of dynamite sticks she was about to set fire to. This was a _cake_.

She was fairly certain none of hers and Conner's classmates noticed how much her peach-colored fingers were trembling, or just how peach her fingers _weren't_ colored at the moment (the tendency of human skin this shade to go almost white when its wearer was nervous only served to make her more nervous). Everyone in the class, including Mr. Carr, were all at her back and saw what they were supposed to see: Megan about to put the perfect finishing touches on her boyfriend's birthday party, holding a match with all the confidence of a wizard with a wand. There was some truth to the projection though. She was about to give Conner a wish. She could easily peg that above the gifts and the sweets and even the gathered friends as her favorite aspect of Earth birthday celebrations, that moment when the candles were blown out and a wish was made for the future.

The look of vexation on Conner's face, however, showed that what he saw was M'gann M'orzz—Miss _Martian_—attempting to start a fire in her hands, and that it made about as much sense to him as it probably should have to her. She deflected the inquiry he sent through their link with a quick assurance that everything was great and was going to be great—immediately regretting not having picked one or the other to say. But her focus was on willing her hand to strike the match against the side of the box more deliberately, to let friciton and chemicals work their magic; to keep the natural dread of flame that had permeated her bones, from her fingers up to her wrists, at bay. As each stroke across the bristled surface rendered the match head blacker and duller, her heart began to pound. And of course, Conner could hear it. Small drops of his anxiety were starting to ripple here and there through the pool of hers, and she was the cause—and she couldn't think of anything worse she could be doing—except maybe use her telekinesis and blow everything. But if she _only could_. She could stretch her will towards any tangible heat without getting weak, she did it all the time in the kitchen—this cake wouldn't have been there if she couldn't, it'd be a plate of icing, sprinkles, and candles—but this wasn't the Cave. It was the school gym.

She meant to drop the dead match into a pocket she'd formed discreetly on her sweater before trying a new one, but it slipped and landed at her feet. She promptly hid it from sight under the sole of her shoe, but under the restless displacement of her weight the wood snapped loudly enough for even non-superpowered ears to hear. "Well, that one was good for nothing!" she half-giggled, projecting her voice up and over her shoulder to those very ears. The acoustics of the gym carried her words to the rafters, where dozens of black and yellow team banners hung high, and where two extra-long strings suspended a "Happy Birthday" banner low enough to be seen clearly from the floor. She grinned mechanically through the realization that there were more delicate ways she could have worded that, and definitely ones that didn't leave a piece of her mind so bare.

She pulled out a second match and started flicking the match against the side of the box haphazardly.

Maybe if she hadn't turned to her fellow Bumblebees for advice on throwing surprise parties for boys (something she had never done on her own—Wally's had been a Team effort); and maybe if she hadn't tripped so profoundly over the word "boys" while trying to ask, the girls wouldn't have been able to talk her into having the party during school, with the squad and hers and Conner's homeroom as attendees. It was her fault, _her fault_—

_M'gann…_ Conner was more confounded than ever, and his tone matched the borderline-grim expression on his face. M'gann quelled the bubbling of _no, no, no, no, no_ that was rising at the back of her thoughts before it could grow into a storm, and simply sighed, all the while still scraping the match against the grain.

_It's your birthday, Conner. I want to… I want to give this to you. You deserve it_. She had kept herself distant all day, trying to hold in a secret, and it was a relief to be sharing her thoughts again. She could sense that it was a relief to him, too. But before he could say anything to her now that the link between them was as open and free as they'd grown accustomed to, a wisp of bright orange light blazed into existence in her hand. And if no one in the background had cheered at the sight of a match finally getting lit (she was pretty sure she recognized the voice as Marvin's) and drowned out her gasp, she more than likely would have blanked and acted on her first impulse to shake the wisp of bright orange light out of her hand _and _existence.

Seventeen candles were bequeathed with seventeen radiant crowns in what she thought must have been the most urgent coronation ceremony in history. The mental image of her already-tingling hand falling limp into the bed of smooth white icing wouldn't leave her alone as she leaned in to touch the burning end of the match to each wick—that, and the image of the fire spreading up the matchstick to her fingertips. Her lips almost vanished behind the vice of her teeth as the last candle was set aglow, but immediately she pushed them back out to blow out the match before taking a giant step back from the small circle of fire.

Karen's voice was the first to ring out with the first few slow, drawn-out syllables of the "Happy Birthday" song, with Wendy and Mr. Carr chiming in seconds later and Mal beginning to contribute something a little off-pace in-between the words "to" and "you." Everyone in the class had opened their mouths to sing by the second "Happy" except for M'gann, whose sweating hands were knotted together and boarded against her mouth in an effort to keep her remaining nerves in check. Her hands dropped to her sides, however, as Conner snuffed out all seventeen candles, and in turn all singing, in one determined breath.

A bout of silence fell all too quickly upon the small crowd, and M'gann anxiously shifted her weight between legs, inadvertently breaking the splintered stick under her foot in half as she did so and hearing the crack. "Did… you… make a wish?" she asked lowly, honestly fearing the answer.

Conner blinked. "Huh? Uh, yeah, I… I wished tha—"

"Well, don't say it out loud or else it won't come true, you goof!" Wendy interrupted as she rushed to M'gann's right and slung an arm around her shoulders, nearly startling M'gann into the air. Marvin wove around Mal, Karen, and two other teens before emerging from M'gann's left with a paper plate and plastic fork no one else had yet grabbed for themselves and exclaiming, "Birthday guy has spoken, guys, let's cut to the cake! You and me are on the same page, birthday guy!" And somewhere in the oncoming rush of murmuring classmates, before the cluster of teenagers had completely blocked all further sight of the table and the cake, M'gann heard Wendy nag Marvin for saying "birthday guy" so much and Marvin's defense that it _was_ Conner's birthday and Conner _was_ a guy, so….

As Mr. Carr handled the cutting and (fair) distribution of the cake, Conner eased away from the crowd to a quiet but fidgety M'gann. His hat slid off of his hair along the way and a knot at one end of the elastic string fell through a hole on one side, but he grabbed hold of it as quickly and as firmly as if it had been an enemy attacking him from behind. _That's a relief_, he groaned into the psychic link, rolling his eyes towards the class and absent-mindedly holding out the hat to give back to her.

M'gann stared at the dangling white string and felt a stinging in her eyes and throat. _You didn't get to make a wish, did you? Hello, Megan—I forgot to tell you it was a tradition_. She punctuated her mistake with the trademark palm to the side of the head, though much more emphatically than usual.

_No, I-I knew about it, just… s'nothing I need to wish for_, he said with a shrug, though the intent in his eyes was telling more than his words. She could feel his thoughts slipping into hers like fingers between fingers, and while neither of them drew attention to themselves, for a moment it was like there was no one else in the room.

_I'll… do better next year?_ M'gann offered, the curve of a smile setting back comfortably into her face.

_In the Cave_, Conner affirmed.

_Yeah…_

_With no fire._

_Conner, you have to have candles on your cake!_

_Then I'll light them._

_But that's missing the point!_

_Yeah?_

_When it's your birthday we're celebrating your—you—Give me that_, M'gann "demanded" in a tone saturated with mischief as she snatched the paper hat out of Conner's hand. She threaded the string back into its hole and tied the knot twice for certainty, then stretched it back onto Conner's head. _Now you're going to come with me, Conner Kent, and I'm going to feed you cake._ She looped her arm around Conner's to lead him back to the table, but she had barely made it two steps forward before laughter overtook her in spite of herself, shaking her nerves thoroughly out from the cage of her ribs.

_Yes, ma'am_, Conner replied as he watched her squadmates turn their heads in her direction and waited for her to regain basic motor functions, the same laughter stirring in him.


End file.
